Tried and True
by smaragdbird
Summary: There's a costume ball and an anomaly and Becker cooking Christmas dinner and Ethan proves a theory about mistletoes. AU for season four and slash


"These are definitely too many clothes." Becker muttered when he saw his clothes for the ARC dinner party laid out on the bed.

"And yet I managed for fifteen years." Ethan smirked at him in the mirror, tying his neckerchief effortlessly. There were a couple minutes where Becker tried to get into his costume with as much grace as possible, knowing that Ethan was watching every move.

"Can you help me with that?" He held up the neckerchief. Ethan gave him an amused look.

"Okay, so how do I look?" A complicated look passed over Ethan's face, too quickly for Becker to decipher.

"Good," Ethan finally said, smoothing Becker's waistcoat down with his hand, "You look good."

"How do you breathe in this thing?" Becker asked, trying to loosen the neckerchief.

"Relax, Becker, in a Russian winter this was pretty much all that stood between you and life-ending pneumonia."

"And what did you do in summer?"

"Bore it like men and drowned any discomfort in vodka." Ethan gave him a condescending smile. "Come on or we'll be late and even your pretty hair won't save you from Jess." And the smug bastard more or less danced out of the room, obviously not bothered by three layers too much of clothing and a tightly tied noose around his neck.

/

The whole thing was Jess' idea. Becker was still not sure how she made Lester give in to it as well but he had and on top of that donned a suit that looked suspiciously like the eight's Doctor's one and going by the look in Connor's eyes, Becker was right.

Danny, Abby and Connor were dressed like they had on the day Christine Johnson had tried to take over the ARC. Emily and Jess both wore low cut, Victorian inspired dresses in red and blue respectively and for a moment Becker had to force himself not to see Sarah kissing him and calling him her hero.

"Stop staring, I might get jealous." Becker rolled his eyes. Emily would probably only shift her attention from Matt to him if he was shooting at him. And even then…

"Aren't you going to dance with me?" Jess asked excitedly, looking at Becker with big, blue eyes.

"Jealous," Ethan whispered into Becker's ear but let go of his arm so that he could take Jess to dance. From the corner of his eyes he saw that Danny stared at Ethan who pointedly ignored him and instead joined in on Matt's and Emily's conversation.

"How do you like my dress?" Jess asked him, distracting him from watching Ethan.

"It's lovely," he answered automatically. Another step and he could see Matt and Emily again, from behind Emily's resemblance to Sarah was even greater. It looked as if Matt was trying to talk himself out of dancing which seemed to amuse Ethan a lot. Abby and Connor were waltzing as well, Abby leading them and Lester stood by, watching them.

Suddenly the alarm sounded. Jess stifled a groan against Becker's chest while Connor was already sprinting towards the anomaly detector. Cursing as soon as he saw the location.

Of course an anomaly would open on Christmas Eve in Hyde Park.

/

Fortunately somehow no one seemed to have notice the anomaly before the team got there and Becker's team secured the area.

"No footprints," Abby said as soon as they reached the anomaly. Her eyes went up to the dark sky. "Jess, is there anything that shows something unusual above Hyde Park? Like a big bird?"

"Nothing so far," Jess replied, "but I'm keeping an eye out."

"Something's coming through!" Danny yelled, gesturing for everyone to take a step back.

It was a bear, a big, brown bear trudging through the anomaly and then sat down, looking a little bit lost at the team. Connor thought it looked like an overgrown teddy bear.

"Becker-"Danny started to call but Ethan gestured him to wait. "It's not dangerous. Let's see if we can get him to go back on his own."

"It's a giant prehistoric bear," Connor reminded him but Ethan shot him a quick grin. "It's not prehistoric."

"How do you know that?" Connor wanted to know.

"It's a Kamchatka bear, they eat berries and fish, not humans. If he walked to the light then something must have spooked it."

"There are many bear species in Russia," Abby reminded him.

"Trust me, I spent three years in Siberia. If I couldn't tell Kamchatka and Siberian bears apart, I wouldn't be here."

In that moment they heard a growl and the bear quickly began to walk into their direction again, away from the anomaly.

"Amba," Ethan cursed when a tiger broke through the light, seemingly focused on the giant bear and not bothered by the dozen humans scattered around.

"Don't tell me that that's harmless, too." Connor said to Ethan.

"It is pretty harmless for us, but not for him." He nodded towards the bear.

"Are you trying to tell me that the tiger eats the bear?" Connor sounded like he couldn't believe it. Ethan shrugged. "If it's a cold winter. Bear tastes nice enough."

"What do you suggest, Patrick?" Danny asked. From the corner of his eyes Becker saw the dark look that crossed Ethan's face when Danny called him by that name.

Suddenly there was another roar. The bear and the tiger seemed to try to scatter away but Becker and his team got them before they got away and then something barrelled through, roaring that it went bone deep, a sound that the animals and humans of Siberia had learned to fear. Even Becker, who heard the noise for the first time in his life, shivered.

He still shot it.

Which only served to make it angrier. But before he could fire a second shot, Ethan pushed him out of the way, putting a bullet into the bear's throat when it roared and stood on its hind legs. For a split second nothing seemed to happen, as if the scene had been frozen: Becker on the ground, Ethan standing in front of the bear with a revolver in his hand, the bear on its hind legs, claws raised ready to strike out.

When time resumed the bear collapsed, burying Ethan underneath it with an ugly wet gasp and blood spattered against snow.

/

Ethan woke up in the infirmary. The room was empty but there was a jacket hanging over the back of the chair next to his bed. He still felt pleasantly numb but half of his body was bandaged and when he tried to sit up his ribs ached dully. For a moment he just said there, staring into the emptiness and thought about the anomaly, the anomaly that led back to Russia, maybe even back to the right time. Ethan shook his head. He shouldn't be this sentimental, shouldn't be feeling wistful for that cold, vicious country.

"Ethan," Becker had come through the door, cup of tea in his hand.

"Merry Christmas," Ethan answered, then added, "It's still Christmas, isn't it?"

"Not even yet," Becker said, looking at him so seriously as if he expected an apology of some sort.

"Great, let's go and cook dinner like we had planned then," Ethan swung his legs out of bed, ignoring his protesting body. He had had worse. "Where are my clothes?"

"You're not supposed to be out of bed." Becker protested, his clipped tone gone for a moment. Ethan rolled his eyes at him.

"Did I ever tell you how I walked from Siberia to Berlin with a sprained ankle while dressed like a girl?"

"No," the clipped tone was back again. All that was missing was Becker calling him by his full name like he did with Jess or Abby.

"Why are you so goddamn angry? We all live and no one got displaced." He had found a change of clothes in a cabinet.

"I'm a trained soldier. You don't need to protect me."

"You're a bloody kid with a toy gun. And I'm not a hapless civilian."

"It's still my job to protect the team."

"Maybe, but I'm not going to stand around and watch you get killed." Ethan held Becker's eyes for a long moment, then he went back to dress himself.

Becker watched him silently. Ethan was serious Becker could hear that in his tone. He had never really given it a thought that Ethan's experiences weren't the same as Emily's. That he had hacked himself through a world full of camouflage beasts that had killed his best friend before escaping 100 years into the past in a foreign country where he had wound up in a prison camp in Siberia for three years until escaping again. He wasn't like Emily at all.

"By the way," Ethan's voice sounded suspiciously casual, "Did Connor determine to which year the anomaly leads?"

"1926," Becker answered. A strange look crossed Ethan's face, something between relief and sadness or maybe regret. "Do you want to go back?"

"To Russia?" Ethan faked a laugh. "Why would I go back? I mean I missed all the fun things like the Civil war, the first world war and about a dozen of famines but that all pales to dinosaur hunting."

"And there's no one-"

"Don't, just don't," Felix smiling at him, Felix promising him _I'll be back, I'll get you out of here. _He forced himself to smile."It's in the past, literally."

Becker nodded slowly. "Let's go home."

/

"You could help you know," Becker muttered, standing at the oven while Ethan sat on the counter next to him. "And get your arse off my counters."

"You should be nicer to me," Ethan slid down from the counter to wrap his arms around Becker from behind, "After all I was crushed by a bear." Becker could feel Ethan's grin against his neck.

"You need a better excuse, you know." He slapped Ethan's hand away when he tried to steal some pieces from the vegetable pot.

"I'm hungry," Ethan whined. Becker rolled his eyes. "If you hadn't played hero, we would have had dinner earlier."

"Not again," Ethan groaned, "I saved your life, show some appreciation."

"I'm cooking you dinner, am I not?" Becker asked back. Their earlier argument wasn't forgotten but hidden for now underneath the playful banter.

"I got you a present," Ethan smiled and took a mistletoe sprig out of his pocket.

"Where did you get that?"

"Stole it from the ARC."

"You are a notorious criminal, aren't you?"

"Are you going to argue with me or are you going to kiss me?"

"Can't I do both?"

"No, I'm sure you can't," Ethan said and proved his theory.


End file.
